Course for Young Doctors

LECTURE III

Dornach, January 4, 1924

From tomorrow onwards I want you to think
about what questions you would like to ask, and then give
these questions to me so that I may remember them as these
lectures go on.

Today I want
to say something in direct continuation of what was said in
the two preceding lectures about the nature of the human
being and his relation to the world. In our anthroposophical
studies here it is useless to bother about the
‘views’ — in reality they are not
‘views’ at all — that are held by modern
science in connection with the human being. It would be
equally useless to make up our minds to deviate as little as
possible from things that have become customary and habitual.
For the state of affairs at present is that in certain great
and significant directions the truth deviates very
considerably from what has become customary. It deviates in
an extraordinarily high degree. And so those who are striving
after truth today will also need to have the courage to
acknowledge many things that modern science would consider
quite absurd. On the other hand, if you really want to heal,
it will be necessary for you — not here, but in other
places — to mix with those who set out to heal today by
the methods customary in the external world. You will have to
have dealings with science as it is in the modern world.
Otherwise, among all the errors of the times, you will feel
insecure with the truth you possess.

The current
idea today is that there are about seventy to eighty
substances on the earth, with certain forces of attraction
and repulsion. These forces are supposed to work through
certain atomic weights and the like. A number of theoretical
laws of nature are then evolved according to which people try
to find out how the substances are formed, and then, out of
the different forces whose origin is looked for in the
substances, a phantasmal picture is built up which is
supposed to represent “man.”

But the truth
is that neither in his form nor in the forces which maintain
his processes of growth and nourishment is the human being
subject only to the influences proceeding from the substances
of the earth. In speaking of the etheric body, we found that
it is entirely under the influence of forces which stream in
from the periphery, from the cosmos. Taking these two kinds
of forces — those which proceed from the substances of
the earth, and those which stream in from the periphery
— you will realize that a balancing, a harmonizing of
these two kinds of forces, is necessary for each organ in the
body. The several systems of organs in the human being differ
very considerably in the way in which this balance is
established.

Let us now
consider the human head from this point of view. To begin
with, attention must be called — and I have often done
this—to the weight of the human brain which is very
largely eliminated because the brain, with its definite
outline, floats in the cerebral fluid. The brain floats in
the cerebral fluid which circulates through the spinal
column. The actual weight of the brain is about thirteen
hundred to fifteen hundred grams. But when it is within the
human being, it weighs much less — at most, twenty
grams. This is because it floats in the cerebral fluid, and,
according to the Law of Archimedes, every body, when it
floats in fluid, loses as much of its weight as is equivalent
to the weight of the volume of fluid displaced. In the fluid,
the brain is subject to buoyancy so that only about twenty to
twenty-five grams of its weight remains, and this is the
weight with which the brain presses downwards. If it were to
press downwards with its full weight there could be no blood
vessels underneath it; they would be crushed. The earthly
quality of heaviness is actually taken away from the brain.
It is not the earthly quality of heaviness that enables us to
be alive in the brain, but the buoyancy, the force that is in
opposition to heaviness. In the case of the brain, this
earthly heaviness amounts to, at most, twenty grams. The
force of attraction exercised by the earth upon the human
head is very little.

We see from
this that the earthly characteristic of the brain vanishes
— vanishes because of the way man is organized. The
human organization is such that the earthly forces vanish.
The Law of Archimedes has taught humanity about buoyancy, but
it is not always taken account of in technical contrivances.
I am not sure whether people realize it, but it is quite
obvious that they acknowledge laws which happen to suit them
and ignore those which do not. What I have told you about
heaviness disappearing applies not only to the human head but
to the whole inner structure of the head. Something else
happens as a result of the special

arrangement of the breathing process, of
certain static conditions which hold sway between
in-breathing and out-breathing. When we draw a breath, a
force is exercised, and then comes a counter force when we
breathe out again. The relationship between this force and
counter force in breathing is similar to the relationship
between gravity and buoyancy.

The curious
thing is that when we are walking, the head, the brain,
remains at rest. On account of buoyancy, the brain is not
heavy, and its inner condition of rest, its inner static
condition, is not changed when we are walking. Nor is this
true only of our walking, but, in a curious manner, it is
especially true also of the movement we make together with
the earth. We only share in the movement with the rest of the
body, not with the brain. The movement is quashed, so far as
the brain is concerned. We may move the head itself as
rapidly as the rest of the body, but even then the brain
remains at rest. It is harder to conceive that something that
is momentarily in movement is, in reality, at rest, than to
conceive that something that is subject to gravity is, in
reality, not heavy. But it is so, nevertheless. Thinking of
the inner organization of the human being, we must say that
the head remains at rest all the time. All the forces adjust
themselves; there is a slight pull of gravity in the downward
direction, in a proportion of twenty to fifteen hundred, and
in the forward direction there is a very slight propelling
force of movement. In essentials, however, the movement is
balanced out.

We can,
therefore, say that the human head, as regards its inner
existence, is like a person who is sitting quietly in an
automobile and not moving at all while the car moves forward.
The experience of the human head is just as it would be if it
had no weight. Neither does it move when the human being
moves and when the earth is moving together with the human
being. The head is, therefore, a very special organ, for it
excludes itself, exiles itself from what is happening on the
earth; the earth only participates to a small extent in the
activities of the head. The head is an image of the cosmos.
In its essential nature, it has nothing to do with the forces
of the earth. The inner structure of the brain is an image of
the cosmic forces. Its form cannot be explained from anything
of an earthly nature but only from the in-working cosmos. I
must speak rather crudely here, but you will understand me.
The earth works only to this extent, that it breaks through
the cosmic formation and inserts into the human being that
which tends towards the earth. You can see this readily by
looking at a skeleton. Take away the skull and you have taken
away the part of the skeleton that is an image of the cosmos.
The arrangement of the ribs is only half cosmic for here the
skeleton is already impressed by the earthly forces. In the
long bones of the legs and the long

bones of the arms, you have a purely
earthly formation. The spinal vertebrae to which the ribs are
connected have arisen from the condition of equilibrium
between the cosmic and the earthly. In the head, with its
covering skull you have a form in which the cosmos deprives
the earthly forces of the possibility of taking shape; this
form of the skull is an image of the cosmos. In this way we
must study the forms of the human body.

When we study
the forms of the human body in this way, knowing that the
inner life of the head, the soft substances and fluids of the
head remain at rest and in this state of rest are an image of
the cosmos, we shall realize that anatomy and physiology, as
presented today, cannot really be said to be true because
they do not acknowledge the existence of cosmic influences. I
have spoken of forces which proceed from the periphery and
stream inwards. They stream in from all sides upon the human
head. But it makes a difference if these forces are
intercepted by the moon, by the sun, or by Saturn. There
peripheric forces are modified by the planetary bodies
standing in the heavens. The directions from which these
forces stream in are, therefore, not without significance.
The in-streaming is essentially modified according to the
position of the constellation from which it comes.

This is a
thought around which there is nothing but dilettantism today,
but in olden times it was the basis of great astronomical
wisdom. The dreadful treatises that exist on such subjects
today give no picture at all of the reality. Understanding of
what I have said is essential before we can have insight into
the structure and make-up of the human being. For the fact
that in his head the human being is subject entirely to the
cosmos, and in the long bones of arms and legs entirely to
the earthly forces, is an expression, right down into
substance, of how the cosmic formative forces behave. You
know that human bone contains calcium carbonate. But it also
contains calcium phosphate. Both substances are very
important for the bones. Through the calcium carbonate the
bones become subject to the earth. If the bone substance was
not permeated by calcium carbonate, the earth could not
approach the bones. The calcium carbonate constitutes the
substantial point of contact for the earth which is thereby
able to shape the bones in accordance with its formative
forces. The thigh bones could not have their extension from
above downwards if this was not made possible by the calcium
carbonate. But there would be no femoral head without CaPO3.
This fact is not changed by the objection which anatomists
will raise, that the quantities of CaCO3 and CaPO3 do not
essentially differ in the shaft of a long bone and its neck
or head. To begin with, this statement is not quite accurate,
for minute research will reveal a difference, but something
else comes into consideration here. The human organism must
have within it both up-building processes and processes of
demolition — processes out of which something is built
up and processes by means of which what is not used in the
up-building is separated off.

A very
decided difference between these up-building forces and
forces of demolition in substances themselves is shown, for
example, by fluorine. The physiologist would say that
fluorine plays a part in the up-building of the teeth and is
also present in the urine. Fluorine, therefore, exists here
and there in the human body. But that is not the point of
importance. In the up-building of the teeth, the activity of
the fluorine is a positive one. The teeth could not develop
without fluorine. In urine, there is fluorine which has been
broken down and is excreted. The essential thing is to
distinguish between whether a substance is being eliminated
at some place in the body or whether it is an absolute
necessity in the up-building process. If part of a bone is
built in from the cosmos, as it were, CaPO3 has here an
up-building activity. In another part of a bone the CaPO3 is
being eliminated. In the shafts of the long bones, CaCO3
builds up, but it is being eliminated in that part of the
bone which is built in from the cosmos (head of the bone).
The essential thing is not the actual presence, here or
there, of a substance. The point of importance is what the
substance is doing, what significance it has at some
particular place in the organism.

I once tried
to give a picture of these things by saying the following:
Suppose I am going for a walk one morning at nine o'clock and
see two men sitting together on a bench. At three o'clock in
the afternoon I pass the bench again and the two men are
together there again. These two facts in themselves really
tell me nothing, because it may be that one of the men had
taken his lunch with him and had remained sitting on the
bench from nine o'clock until three o'clock, while the other
had gone off for a walk and had come back again just before
three o'clock. One of them is quite rested, the other
terribly tired. In this respect there is an inner difference
between them. The point of importance is not the presence of
the one person or the other, but what each of them has been
doing, how has life brought him to this particular place.
Therefore, so far as understanding of the human being is
concerned, the presence of some substance in an organ is not
really a matter of importance. It is a question of knowing in
what kind of process the substance is involved — a
process of up-building or a process of demolition.

We shall
never find the transition from the quality of a substance
that is necessary to the human organism, to a remedy, unless
we keep this process in mind. This is the only way which will
lead to the realization that the distribution of substances
in the cosmos is quite different from what is usually
thought. It is a striking fact — a fact to which no
thought has been given for five or six centuries — that
while certain analytical processes prove the existence of
iron in the human organism (it can be said quite certainly
that there is iron in the blood), attempts to prove the
existence of lead in the human organism will fail, if the
organism is in a normal state. Lead is only known in the form
of lead ores, or heavy lumps. But just think of it —
all metals which exist in the coarse, lumpy form as earthly
substances were once present during the epochs of Saturn, Sun
and Moon, in the fluid condition, even in the condition of
warmth ether. Now, the human being — in a different
form of course — was already in existence on Old
Saturn. He has been involved in all these processes, among
them the process whereby, out of a fluid, delicate etheric
condition, iron has become what it is today. Man has been
involved in the whole process of the world's evolution.

The strange
thing is that the human being has taken iron and also
magnesium into his own structure, but not lead. He has united
the magnesium process with his own being. But he threw out
the lead process. So far as the magnesium is concerned,
therefore, we see that there are working, within the human
being, the same forces as are working in magnesium in the
external world; the human being has to master them inwardly.
But before man was enclosed in his skin, when he was still a
structure that was involved in a process of metamorphosis and
united with the cosmos, he overcame the lead process and
still has within him the forces for the elimination of the
lead process. He has within him the up-building forces of
magnesium and the forces for the elimination of the lead
process.

What does
this mean, in reality? You need only study what happens to
the human organism in lead poisoning. It becomes inwardly
brittle, sclerotic. It is therefore correct to say that the
organism cannot tolerate lead and when there is lead
poisoning there is lead within the organism. The organism
begins to fight against the process that is contained in the
lead substance — substances are always processes. Lead
spreads out within the organic process, and the organism,
exerting itself in opposition, tries to drive out the lead.
When it succeeds it gets well. If the lead proves itself to
be the stronger, the organism does not get well, and the
well-known process of decay that is connected with lead
poisoning sets in, because the organism can only tolerate
those processes which overcome the lead process. It cannot
tolerate the formative forces of lead. If we now try to find
out what it means to the human being that he will not put up
with having lead in his organism, we are led to the
following: man is a being of sense. He perceives things
around him and then thinks about them. He needs both forms of
activity. He must perceive things in order that he may be
connected with the world; he must also think about them. He
must repress the act of actual perception and then unfold his
own, independent activity. If we were only to perceive, we
should lose ourselves all the time in acts of external
seeing. But by retreating from the things themselves, by
thinking about them — thereby, we become a personality,
an individuality. We do not lose ourselves in the things. If
we study the human etheric body, we find that it has within
it a center for the forces which throw out lead. This center,
approximately, lies where the hairs grow in a kind of vortex
at the back of the crown of the head. That is the center of
the forces which overcome lead. They stream into all parts of
the organism in order that the formative forces of lead may
not get into the organism. The forces which the body has
developed for the overcoming of lead have great significance,
for they are the same forces which enable me, when I am
looking, say, at this piece of chalk, not to be entirely
caught up in the simple act of looking at the chalk.
Otherwise I should identify myself with the object of
perception. But I make myself independent, I dampen down the
perception of the object observed by means of those forces
which overcome lead. It is due to these forces that the human
being can be a self-contained personality; these forces
enable the human being to separate himself from the
world.

I will now
speak of something that is very striking in connection with
the forces which overcome lead. Not only have they a
physical-etheric significance but also a psychical and moral
significance.

The human
being takes certain metallic substances into himself, unites
them with his own bodily organism; other metallic substances
he overcomes and has them within him only in the form of
processes of rejection, processes which are master of these
substances. Now why is it that in the course of his long
evolution from the Saturn period and the Sun period, man has
separated off certain external substances and has received
others into his organism? In that man has this process of
elimination within, he is able to receive into himself
independent moral forces. We can imagine that the human
organism, as constituted presently, may be unable to make use
of lead but contains certain forces which compensate for
lead; we can imagine the organism containing lead in the same
way as it now contains iron. If this were so the human being
would bring into himself semi-moral qualities; for it is so
with lead. He would then have a morbid affinity (we should
call it a 'morbid' or pathological affinity) to the
impurities existing in the outside world. Such a person would
always be on the lookout for vile-smelling substances and
like to smell them. If we notice that some child has
perverted instincts of this kind — and there are
children who are partial to everything that smells, —
they will sniff petroleum, for instance — then we may
be sure that the quality of the blood that rejects lead is
not present. And it is then a matter of calling up this
lead-rejecting power by clinical methods or even by
medicaments. It is possible to do this.

And now let
us think of magnesium, a substance which plays a significant
role in the human organism. There is something very
interesting about magnesium. When speaking about education I
have said many times that the first period of life, the
period which lasts to the time of the change of teeth, must
be sharply differentiated from the following periods. The
second period lasts from the change of teeth until puberty.
Magnesium, as well as fluorine, is necessary for the
development of the teeth. But the process of the development
of the teeth is not localized in the upper and lower jaws
— the whole organism participates in it. The magnesium
process takes place over the whole organism. And this is the
most important process of all up to the time of the change of
teeth. After the teeth have changed, magnesium has no longer
its former significance. For the magnesium forces in the
human being harden the organism; they enclose it in itself.
This consolidation of the organism, this incorporation of the
forces and substances, comes to an end at the second
dentition.

Until then,
the magnesium forces are exceedingly important for the
organism. This organism, so far as its development is
concerned, must now be considered a self-contained whole. It
must contain and it must enfold the magnesium process, for if
this process were absent the organism would lack the
necessary forces of consolidation. The organism cannot cease
generating the magnesium forces. This goes on after the
change of teeth just as it did before. The magnesium forces
must be worked upon in the organism, and after the change of
teeth the essential thing in regard to magnesium is that it
must be overcome, must be thrown out. It enters particularly
into the secretion of milk, is excreted with the milk. The
secretion of milk is connected with puberty, so you have here
a periodic process. Up to the change of teeth magnesium is
consumed, as it were, by the organism; after the change of
teeth, up to the time of puberty, it is thrown off,
separated. And magnesium, now a substance to be secreted, is
one of the forces which form the milk. After puberty there is
a kind of rebound and the magnesium forces are used for the
more delicate consolidation of the muscles.

Substances
are only a combination of processes. Lead is only in
semblance the heavy, gray substance — with which we are
familiar. It is nonsense to say that lead is a piece of
coarse substance. In reality, lead is the process that goes
on within the boundaries which mark the extent of the spread
of lead. Everything is a process. One cannot say, once and
for all, that certain 'substance processes' are worked up in
the human being, and certain others, like the lead process,
for which we must always have the power of elimination, are
thrown off. It is not correct to say this because there are
other processes, like the magnesium process, in connection
with which there is rhythmic alternation; in periods which
alternate rhythmically we have to consume the magnesium
process, and then again throw it out.

This will
show you that it means nothing to say, as the result of mere
analysis: the human organism contains magnesium. It means
nothing, for in the twelfth year of life these substances
have quite a different significance than they have in the
fourth or fifth year of life. We unfold a real knowledge of
the human being when we know the period during which certain
substance processes are important in the human organism. If
we want to know how substances outside in nature can work
further within the human organism, it is of very little
importance to study the chemical composition of these
substances. We must study something that is hardly studied at
all today. If we trace back the study of substances to the
thirteen or fourteenth century, we find the beginnings of
modern chemistry. These beginnings are to be found in the
alchemical processes which are so often scoffed at nowadays.
But alchemy contained something else too, of which there has
been no continuation. It is what might be called today the
doctrine of signatures. This Doctrine of Signatures was
applied especially in the study of plants but also of
minerals, and it has not been developed or continued.

The
characteristic quality of antimony is its well-known spiky,
crystalline formation. If you apply a certain metallurgical
treatment to antimony, you get the familiar “antimony
mirror” when the volatilizing antimony is precipitated
on a cold surface. Antimony has the tendency to develop forms
which reveal themselves very clearly as forms of the etheric
body. The shapes taken by antimony are very similar to the
forms of certain simple plants which have an affinity to the
etheric body. When one studies antimony one has the feeling
at once that this antimony is very sensitive to etheric
forces. It has an affinity with etheric forces. Everyone can
confirm this by bringing antimony to the cathode. There will
be a series of slight explosions which show the relation of
antimony to the etheric forces. This is a striking case, but
at one time people had a great faculty for understanding
these things. This faculty is now quite lost and no attention
or respect is paid to such indications as I have given. And
for this reason, certain significant observations leave
people in complete perplexity.

Think of
diamond, graphite, anthracite, common coal. They are all
carbon, but yet so different from each other. Why are they
different? If people were capable of not limiting their
investigations to the chemical composition but of finding out
about the ‘Signature’, as it was called in olden
times, they would begin to understand what the difference is
between common coal and graphite. Common coal came into being
during the Earth evolution, graphite during the preceding
Moon evolution. Diamond came into being during the Sun
evolution. When you study these things in the cosmic aspect,
you realize once again that what is of essential importance
is not the substance itself but the conditions and times
under which and during which a substance assumed a definite
form. Physical reality is subject to the element of time, and
time has a definite significance. If you think of what I have
said, you will realize: common coal is a child, it has as yet
no great age; graphite is a youth, but older than common
coal; diamond, though not exactly ancient, is very mature. If
you have to set a task which demands the power of maturity,
you will not give it to a child. Everything depends on the
age. So you will realize that simply because of its cosmic
age, coal, in whatever form it appears, has a different task
from graphite which is more mature.

Insight into
cosmic processes is necessary if we want to understand the
relationship of the human being to what is out there in the
cosmos. Antimony has a particular connection with the human
etheric body, and if you introduce it into the human organism
as a medicament, you must understand what antimony is outside
the human being before you can know what is stimulated in the
etheric body by the use of antimony. You must study the
delicate processes in nature if you want to understand how a
medicament is to act within the human organism.